Endangered Landmarks : Dos Vientos Barns, Link to Area’s Past, Face Uncertain Future

The abandoned wood and metal barns nestled between the hills of Dos Vientos Ranch are one of the few visible remnants of this suburban city’s dwindling rustic past.

Once owned by horse lover Malcolm Clark, the designer of Snap-On tools, the 49-year-old buildings--designated Ventura County landmarks--may soon be destroyed to make way for the massive, 2,360-home subdivision that’s set to forever transform this region of Newbury Park.

Some local activists and City Council members are angry--not with the developer, but with the city--about the possibility of losing another piece of the Conejo Valley’s ranching heritage.

“The point is that they are landmarks,” said William Maple, a Thousand Oaks resident who has championed saving historically significant, if not always very old, buildings in the city. “We’re hocking our history for development. We have leadership looking at our future, and they’re not bothering to look in the rearview mirror. It’s unfortunate.”

Operating Engineers, one of two Dos Vientos developers, notified Thousand Oaks last year that its plans for the ranch did not include the barns where Clark, at one time Henry Ford’s tool and die maker, once raised Tennessee walking horses, Percheron draft horses and Clydesdales. The city, in turn, told the developer to find someone who wanted the landmarks.

“The city is requiring that we make every effort to have those barns moved, to see if any legitimate organization is interested,” said Eric Taylor of Vtn West Inc., the land-planning company used by Operating Engineers. “And we have done our best to find someone. But so far, no one wants it.”

Operating Engineers asked the Conejo Recreation and Park District to take control of the barns and relocate them, but the district declined. After months of trying to find someone who wanted them, the developer informed Thousand Oaks in a letter in June that it plans to demolish or remove the old buildings from its property next year.

“We drooled appropriately,” said Jerry Knotts, president of the Conejo Valley Historical Society, which looked at the barns on Thursday. The society runs the Stagecoach Inn Museum. “Those are magnificent structures.

“But it would be a major task to move them,” he added. “That one wooden barn is so grand. It is a great representation of farming in this area.”

Because the barns were awarded landmark status by the Ventura County Board of Supervisors in 1986, the developer had to notify the Ventura County Cultural Heritage Board that it planned to remove them within 180 days.

But the panel--Ventura County’s foremost advisory body on local landmarks--no longer has jurisdiction over such issues in Thousand Oaks. Wanting local control, the city severed its ties with the cultural heritage board eight years ago, and the City Council is now in charge of designating Thousand Oaks buildings as landmarks.

That upsets Maple, who believes the City Council is ill-equipped to make such decisions.

“The City Council members are now the so-called experts on historical preservation, and they know nothing about the subject,” Maple said. “These buildings are going to be demolished. It’s a shame.”

It also angers outgoing Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski, who said city officials never notified the City Council that the barns were in danger. She believes Thousand Oaks has done nothing to protect its historical assets.

“I’m deeply concerned about this,” she said. “The city of Thousand Oaks hasn’t done a damn thing in eight years to preserve any of our history, and I’m incensed that we were not forewarned about all of this.

“The City Council has not demonstrated any attention to our historic resources,” she added. “This just shows the disregard with which this city’s leaders have treated anything that is not a new development. We would be in much better hands with the county’s cultural heritage board.”

Councilman Mike Markey disagrees. He said there is really not much Thousand Oaks can do to save the buildings--other than relocating them to city property and footing the bill. That may not make sense, he said.

“[Operating Engineers] are willing to make them available, but it looks like no one wants to take them because of the condition,” Markey said. “We need to look at whether we can move them, and how much that would cost. It’s not just the cost of moving, either. We’d have to restore them.”

The land where the barns lie was once part of Rancho Guadalasca, which along with Rancho Conejo made up most of what is now called the Conejo Valley. It was part of an 8,000-acre farm purchased by Joseph Lewis--the man who brought the lima bean to California--in 1906. Lewis, for which the largest strain of lima beans is named, was one of the farmers responsible for helping Ventura County earn its former distinction of Lima Bean Capital of the World.

But despite his early success, Lewis fell into financial difficulty during the Depression, and a Los Angeles banker foreclosed on the farm. The lower portion of the ranch was purchased by the state, which built Camarillo State Hospital on the site, and the upper half--Dos Vientos Ranch--was bought by Clark.

The barns, both built in the 1930s, are part of a stable complex. They are all that remains of Clark’s ranch property. His ranch house was destroyed in a fire.